People have been doing prayer, but they don't know what prayer is — because prayer is the most subtle and refined form of love. If you have not moved through the heart center you cannot go to prayer; there is no way. One has to go via the heart. Because of the throat center, because it exists at the throat center and happens at the throat center, people have started doing rituals. People have made prayers: they assert, they say something.
But just by using the throat center and saying something to God you are not praying. Prayer is concerned with the throat center, but not as verbalization. It is an experience at that center, and the experience is exactly like when a child sucks at his mother's breast for the first time. It is not that you say something, but you receive something.
Prayer is not saying something to God, but receiving something from God. God becomes the mother, the mother's breast. Prayer is a nourishment. Yes, it exists and happens at the throat center because the throat center is the center to receive. The throat center is the first center which starts functioning because the child has to suck air; that happens through the throat center. And then he has to suck milk; that happens through the throat center. Prayer is just like sucking air, vitality, or sucking milk at the breast of your mother.
Hence, Jesus says, "Unless you become like small babes, you will not enter into my kingdom of God." He is talking about the throat center. But Christians have completely lost track of it. He is saying in a symbolic way to again become a babe, again start sucking from the throat center the energy that life is. Now, of course, the breast is invisible and the milk is invisible.
Have you watched a man in prayer? — how diffused with grace he looks, how peaceful, how at home, how relaxed.
Watch a small babe sucking milk, fallen asleep with the nipple of the breast still in his mouth, resting on his mother's breast, fallen asleep. Watch the face of the child; that is the face of the saint also when he arrives at the throat center and prayer arises.
PRAYER is not something that you do with God; prayer is something that you allow God to do with you. Prayer is receptive. It is not an action on your part, it is a passive welcome.. Prayer is not saying something to God. On the contrary, it is listening to God. It is being ready to receive His gift.
OSHO
